


Ragged Ends Of Your Summer Dress

by cavalreapers



Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, Ohara Incident, That Hustle, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 11:00:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4784897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cavalreapers/pseuds/cavalreapers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It just never made sense to be anything else,” Robin tells them, swirls her tea in its cup.</p>
<p>A commissioned fic about trans woman Robin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ragged Ends Of Your Summer Dress

“It just never made sense to be anything else,” Robin tells them, swirls her tea in its cup. Fine china, because Sanji trusts her enough not to break it and loves her deeply enough to risk it. Its not often, if at all, that the Straw Hat pirates talk about their pasts, but tonight seems like a good night for it. The few of them sequestered away in the kitchen on the Merry while a storm rages, words and rain splashing against the window; it makes for a nice scene.

Robin has always found storms calming.

Her nakama - and she finally feels confident calling them that - listen for more, curious about this pretty stranger who only a short while ago was called Miss All Sunday. She lapses into rambling about it, gesticulating calmly while she does. It feels good, feels comfortable.

Feels like home, for the first time in a long time.

*

The one thing she pulls from the wreckage of Ohara above all else is that she’s “she”. The notion of being “he” was only a moment’s doubt.

It doesn’t make her heart hurt any less, doesn’t make the nightmares stop, this new confidence. But as she moves on, paddling away from that cannon-ravaged island, she feels solid in that. 

*

It keeps getting easier from broken home to broken home, she finds. 

Never having a place that one is tied down to means that one can remake themselves, island to island; organization to organization. Robin ties ribbons in her hair and vows to be a strong woman like her own mother, one day. Starts to take hormone-blocking pills, estrogen pills from pharmacies, leaves whatever she has for money in the place of the bottles because just grabbing them and running feels wrong.

Its just about some of the only stuff she actually pays for, for a while.

*

There’s one family who she stays with for months and, Gods, its heaven there. They’re a poor family of five and she has to do all the chores around the house, again, but there’s food and a warm place to sleep. Its fucking _bliss_ , those couple months.

The girl in the family, older than her by a couple years, knocks on the door to the attic one night. Gifts her with some hand-me-down clothes that they spend a while trying on, clothes that she cries over once the girl is back in her room asleep.

They call the marines on her later, of course, once they found out who she is.

She has to leave some of the clothes behind, forgotten in her haste to escape the marines.

She keeps what she didn’t forget, there in the dusty old attic that came so, so close to being home; she keeps it for a long time.

*

Somewhere along the line, Robin tells herself that she doesn’t need to apologize - to herself or to anyone - for her deep voice or broad shoulders.

Especially if she can back up her own shit and fight for herself.

Life gets a lot easier once she lets that happen.

*

Miss All Sunday is a couple syllables that roll off of Sir Crocodile’s tongue and they make her feel at once both good and dirty. His fingers tap against the table and as they skirt around the subject of gender - as they are wont to do, when its not business - she realizes he’s the same. 

It makes him a little more human, makes her future betrayal just a little harder.

*

To be honest, Robin feels like she’s more scared of her nakama judging her for being the Devil Child Nico Robin, not trans woman Nico Robin - not that they would. The fear is an old thing, hiding deep and cold in her chest. Her identity as a woman is just the one part of her she’s never wanted to apologize for, to burn or to bury.

All those burnt and buried parts, though … They’re all right. She’s made peace with them. 

With her nakama, she can feel herself bloom, again.


End file.
